Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [132]
“Really …,” Eirene said with skepticism.
“I think so.” Anna positioned the bandage, easing it smooth, and bound it lightly. “I’m told he has friends among the Varangian Guard.” She bent to her work again.
“Yes,” Eirene agreed, wincing as one of the worst sores was washed. “I think they are grateful that a man of Demetrios’s rank should befriend them. Some noble families treat them less courteously. Not rudely so much as with indifference.” She smiled bleakly. “Like a good servant.”
“You mean Bessarion? Or Justinian Lascaris?”
“Justinian less so. Of course to Bessarion they were heathens, for the most part. Certainly those from the far north.” She bit her lip, forcing herself not to pull away from the pain.
Anna affected not to notice. “Someone told me Esaias Glabas was talented. Is that true?”
“Good heavens, no!” Eirene said with contempt. “He could tell a story well, and he knew endless jokes, most of them unrepeatable in front of women. He could flatter, and keep his temper even when provoked.”
Anna smiled. “You didn’t like him.” It was more an observation than a question.
“He is not dead,” Eirene snapped. “At least not as far as I know. I think Demetrios would have mentioned it.”
“They were friends?” Anna did not look up from her work.
“I suppose so. Esaias was really a companion of the emperor’s son, Andronicus. They used to go riding together, and to the horse races. And of course drinking, gambling, parties of one sort and another.”
“I can’t see Bessarion liking that,” Anna remarked. “From what people say, he was remarkably serious.”
“The word you are looking for is humorless,” Eirene said wryly, at last looking at the sore as Anna finished bandaging it. “You are gentle. Thank you.”
Eirene was too clever to be fooled. If the wild idea in Anna’s mind was right, it would be not only pointless but dangerous to awaken her suspicions. She felt her hands shaking. “I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“It’s nothing,” Eirene said, dismissing the slight brush of Anna’s hand over one of the other wounds. “You are quite right. Bessarion did not like Esaias. I think he merely used him.”
Anna took a deep, quivering breath. “In his struggle to … to save the Church?” She invested her voice with puzzlement, as if she did not understand. “I cannot imagine him working to indulge in such … parties.”
There was a minute’s fleeting pity in Eirene’s eyes for the eunuch robbed of manhood, which she took Anna to be, of both its pleasures and its weaknesses. “He didn’t,” she said gently. “Nor Justinian. Esaias was planning the biggest party with horse races, from the night after Bessarion was killed. It would have been superb. Esaias was a magnificent host; I should add that to his list of qualities.”
Anna pretended interest. “Really? Horse racing? That can be exciting to watch. I suppose everyone would have been there, even Bessarion?”
Eirene hesitated.
“Wouldn’t they?” Anna’s heart was thundering inside her.
Eirene looked away. “No. I believe on that occasion Bessarion was supposed to have an audience with the emperor.”
The silence in the room was heavy, almost prickling. Anna started to roll up the unused bandages and put them away. “So the emperor would not have been there?”
“It hardly matters now,” Eirene said, a sudden, hard edge to her voice. “Bessarion and Antoninus are dead, and Justinian is in exile.” She looked at her bandaged arms. “Thank you.”
“I’ll come and dress them again tomorrow,” Anna told her, standing up. “And bring you more herbs.”
Working quietly in the evening, alone in the room where she kept her medicines, Anna crushed leaves, ground roots and stems, sometimes with mortar and pestle, always being careful never to let one herb contaminate another; and all the while, thoughts crowded her mind as she turned over every possible interpretation of what she had learned.
Did she have all the pieces that mattered, if only she could put them in the